Everything you need to know about the new IPR policy
In this knowledge driven era, companies have no time to waste in creating an intellectual property strategy. The 21st century belongs to entrepreneurs. It is driven by creativity and innovation, which need to be protected and channelised for better use in future.
Enhancing the protection of IPR beyond the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the Indian government has announced an IPR policy that is compliant with global norms. Intellectual property (IP) is a collection of ideas and concepts, which can be protected through trademarks, copyrights and patents. If you make it easy for others to steal your ideas, you can ultimately end up washing away your own path to success.
The new IPR policy is designed in a way to facilitate the ease of doing business in India. The policy ensures credibility with potential investors and strategic partners encourages them to invest in India. India claims to have been pressurised by the US to make the IPR protection stricter in India to curb the piracy of music, movies and unlicensed software, which causes losses of $7 billion annually.
It has been announced that trademark registration will take only one month as per the IPR policy. After implementing this policy, copyright laws will be under the control of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (“DIPP”).
The new policy lays down seven objectives, which are briefly covered below.
- Creating awareness – The new policy aims to create awareness among all sections of society about the economic, social, and cultural benefits of IPR. It will be made a compulsory part of the curriculum in major institutions. The need to open a national research institute for IPR has also been proposed, to increase outreach.
- Innovation – To offset India’s growing foreign dependence, India needs to develop indigenous products. Through its national IPR policy, the government’s main thrust is to create an environment where people can think innovatively and generate innovation in every field. The policy will help mainly inventors and entrepreneurs who are dealing with an overload of knowledge and ideas that need to be protected (from infringers) through trademarks, copyrights or patents, as may be required.
- Balanced structure of legal framework – Protection of intellectual property can only be provided through well-defined laws, which balance the interests of the public with those of intellectual property owners. If there are no protection mechanisms in the legal system, then people will not be encouraged to create more intellectual property. The new policy will lead to stronger institutional monitoring mechanisms to curb IP offenses at the state level.
- Administration and Management– The policy aims to modernise and strengthen service-oriented IPR administration. Digitisation of all government filings has made it quite hassle free to register trademarks online by using IP India’s Site. By 2017, the government aims to lower the average time for pending IPR applications to 18 months (down from 5-7 years) and trademark registration to one month (down from 13 months).
- Commercialisation of IPRs – The policy aims to enable Indian companies to get value for IPRs through commercialisation. Most business owners do not know how their brand impacts the value of their business. A strong brand is nothing but an intangible asset that includes trademarks, copyrights, patents and trade secrets which are the intellectual property of that company. At the time of valuation or in case if the owner is considering selling his business, then intangible assets like your intellectual property can command more value than other tangible assets. Also, a well-protected brand attracts investors as they will feel safe to invest in a company that has everything secured in legal terms to avoid any future conflicts.
- Enforcement and Adjudication – Protecting intellectual property with trademarks, copyrights and patents plays an essential role in monetising innovation. By strengthening the enforcement and adjudicatory mechanisms for combating IPR infringements, a company can stop others from stealing its work. The process of opposing and safeguarding IP will involve coordination between various agencies and guiding IP owners to follow best practices to avoid digital piracy.
- Human Capital Development – To strengthen and expand human resources, the new policy calls for (i) new institutions and capacities for teaching, training, research and skill building in IPRs; (ii) the opening of R&D institutions; and (iii) making IPR a compulsory subject to be taught in schools and colleges. The aim is to develop a increasing pool of skilled IP experts, to facilitate the growth and judicious management of IP assets.
Wrapping it Up
After ‘Startup India’ and ‘Make in India’, India now needs to protect the ‘Creative India: Innovative India’ by simply registering everything that we create. Every new business owner should be aware of his IP rights and should hire a trusted intellectual property consultant to help drive out the myths and build a strategy to best protect the company.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.